In Union, and even at Dogwood, she’d always dressed carefully before leaving her room and beginning her day, but she was too hungry for all that, so instead she stepped over the thick carpet and sat in front of her vanity in the pale peach ankle-length slip that Sophia had given her, along with several other items that the actress no longer had use for. She threw the cream-colored kimono that hung in her closet over her shoulders and tiptoed out into the apartment, just like that. The hall was quiet and lit by sconces, and she padded over its soft carpets toward the sunken living room, which was decorated with simple furniture that nonetheless seemed very expensive, and pampas grass erupting from gold urns, and gigantic portraits of Valentine and Sophia. The room was a little strange to her—somehow too grand to really be a home—and she was happy to step into a kitchen fragrant with the smell of cooking bacon.
“Ah, Miss Larkspur, the lady of the hour!” Valentine said in booming, perfectly enunciated syllables. He was sitting at the round pedestal table by the large double windows with the morning papers strewn before him. Letty couldn’t stop herself from smiling at that—she was helpless around compliments; she lit up when she got one, like a child who has been offered sweets. The kitchen made her happy, too—it was clean and simple compared to the rest of the house. The uniformed maid was busy chopping potatoes on the tiled sideboard, and the aroma of coffee emanated from the stove.
“Are you hungry?” he asked solicitously.
“Yes, I’m starving!” Letty said, sliding into a chair and putting her elbows on the sturdy surface of the table.
Valentine grinned. “Beryl, make Miss Larkspur an omelet, would you?”
“Yes, Mr. O’Dell,” the maid replied as she advanced toward the table with a porcelain coffee cup and saucer in one hand and a coffee pitcher in the other.
“My dear, what a phenomenon you are! You see, already your name is on everyone’s lips…” Jovially he turned open the paper near Letty’s hand to the society page and bent forward, putting his head close to hers as he drew his index finger across a photograph that took up almost a quarter of the page. In it, a girl with short dark hair sweeping over her pale cheeks was being moved across a dance floor by a tall, smiling boy in a tuxedo jacket, her body not so much tiny as exquisitely delicate in his arms.
“Is that me?” she heard herself say.
“Yes, if the New York Troubadour knows anything at all. ‘Miss Letty Larkspur, who has fast become inseparable from our leading light Sophia Ray, was seen dancing on the Ritz roof with the up-and-coming player for Montrose Filmic Company, Laurence Peters, at dawn…’” Valentine pushed the paper toward Letty, and she quickly scanned the column, as though she were afraid he might have made it all up. “Sound like you?”
“I guess, it’s only that…,” Letty whispered, as she began to read the item again from the top. “Well, the funny thing is, I don’t remember being on the Ritz roof.”
“No?” Valentine chuckled. “I suppose that doesn’t surprise me, really. You fell asleep in one of their salons sometime after eating breakfast late last night, and Hector had to carry you to the car. Must have been quite a party. Seems Sophia fell ill and had to take a room at the Ritz for the night.”
“Oh.” Letty couldn’t bring herself to look at Valentine. The image of Jack Montrose’s sneer rose up in her thoughts, and she felt a little sick.
“Yes. Must have been quite a night you girls had.”
If she heard any more details of the evening, Letty feared she might reveal what she suspected had transpired between Sophia and Montrose. There were a few seconds when she even thought she ought to. Seeing Valentine as he was now—ruffled in the morning and so kind and handsome—she knew that he deserved better. But she couldn’t bring herself to tell on the woman who had already taught her so much about how to be a New York girl, and she changed the subject in the only way she could think of: “Do you suppose they get the Troubadour in Ohio?”
Valentine met her eyes. “Why, do you have some fellow waiting for you back there?”
“No.” Letty shook her head emphatically, as though that would prevent her blush from lingering.
“Sophia thinks the world of you,” Valentine was saying as he turned his body toward the window. She watched the workings of his neck as he swallowed, and momentarily forgot the extraordinary fact of her name being in the paper as she gazed at the perfect line of his profile against the bright skyline. “Perhaps,” he went on quietly, “she sees something of her young self in you. Only—” He exhaled, and his eyelids sank closed, and when he spoke again it was with a tone that she’d never heard him use. “Only, don’t end up too much like her.”
“But isn’t that why I’m here?” Letty said before she could think how it would sound, or even what it meant.
Valentine stared at her, his eyes as deep as pools. The sunshine lancing through the window made him appear golden as he never could in the movies. “Show business is a hard business, and it has made Sophia tough; that is all I mean. You must not lose your sensitivity, and—and I would hate to see you hurt.”
The weight of his hands hovered over hers, and the room melted away. Letty felt the same way she had when she first met Valentine; his brown gaze was warm and steady in her direction, as though for the first time she was completely understood. The connection between them hung in the air, beautiful and ephemeral.
“There you go, miss,” Beryl said as she roughly slid a plate in front of Letty. The omelet was perfectly formed, on a white oval plate, garnished with a sprig of parsley and a twist of grapefruit that frowned up at her accusatorily.
“What a happy sight this is!”
Letty’s head swiveled and she saw Sophia, framed in the doorway to the living room, her hair rather limp but her lipstick freshly applied, wearing a tuxedo jacket over her turquoise evening gown. It took Letty several seconds to realize that Sophia was not being sarcastic, that she was truly pleased by the sight of her husband and her protégée cozily eating breakfast together. Then she realized that Sophia must have been out on the street like that, and a sense of scandal rippled through her.
Valentine issued a hearty “Good morning, my dear!” as his wife advanced toward him and planted a kiss on his lips.
“Well, what are they saying about us this morning?”
“A lot—isn’t that the only thing that matters?” Valentine replied lightly, and they both laughed as Sophia opened the newspaper and began to search for her name. They continued to chatter, but Letty couldn’t hear them. She could still feel the place on her hands where Valentine had touched her; the spot was vibrating with the warmth of his skin against hers.
“Coffee?” Beryl was addressing Sophia, but she was staring at Letty. Suddenly Letty was conscious of her appearance, that she was wearing her bedclothes. The way the silk slip caressed her skin made her feel only a little better than naked. Shame and confusion washed over her, and for a moment she almost wished that she had woken up in Ohio. Just a few seconds ago she had been gazing longingly at a married man—her new friend’s husband—and she was certain that her guilt was radiating from every point of her body. But then there was that other hideous fact, like a screw in her belly, that Sophia had cheated on that husband and that Letty had seen it.
“I ought to get dressed,” Letty said stupidly.
“But what about your breakfast?” Valentine asked.
Letty stood up, pushing back her chair. “I’m not so hungry anymore,” she lied, and backed toward the door.
“Well, hurry up.” Sophia winked at her chummily. “I have big plans for today.”
“All right.” But Letty was hurrying away from the kitchen just to avoid meeting Sophia’s eyes.
In her room, Letty wasted no time in undoing the kimono and pulling the slip over her head. As quickly as possible she secured her plain cotton underclothes, and over that, a pleated skirt that covered her knees and a boxy sailor-style shirt. She sat at her vanity again, taking in short breaths. Now she recognized her
self; here was the small-town girl she had briefly misplaced. It was all very well for movie stars to wait until dusk to dress properly, but she had grown up among simpler folks.
The day she had spent with Sophia had felt so fancy and fun, and Letty knew that a movie star of her caliber could teach her things she’d never learn elsewhere. But the price was so heavy. The secret she was being asked to keep, disgusting to her. She remembered now that she had learned to adore Valentine O’Dell on her weekly sojourns to the movie house—she had loved him a long time really, from afar, and she hated the idea of him being mistreated. Of course, that love had been the silly fantasy of a little girl; she had understood that after a few days in his company. But now, thinking again of his touch, and the magnitude of Sophia’s betrayal, she wondered if her kind of affection wasn’t what he needed after all.
When Cordelia got to the airfield and saw how Max was flying, all of the color drained from her face. Even the roar of his airplane sounded angry. When he turned sideways or upside down or did flips in the air, the effect was just as furious. She had seen him do these tricks before, and though they always made her frightened for him, they had seemed playful then, and artful, a perfectly executed imitation of danger. The way he was flying now, it looked like a direct challenge to Death himself.
Relief washed over her when he finally brought the plane down and she could run toward him across the ruined grass. Their eyes met, and Cordelia briefly saw the storm in his. Then he turned away from her and stalked toward the hangar.
“Max, wait!”
She had to run to catch up to him. When she did, she grabbed his hand. It was slight, but she could feel his rage ebb a tiny bit with the touch.
“Max,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
They stood like that a while, an arm’s distance apart, holding hands. He stared off into the distance, and she stared at the back of his head.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” he said eventually. But the words were so full of bitterness that she knew he wanted everyone he had ever met to be sorry.
“Come. Just come on. Come with me. All right?”
Her hands went up his forearm, gently pulling. Eventually he turned and she saw how twisted up his face had gotten with all the nasty things being said about him. At first he came reluctantly, but by the time they reached the car they were both moving quickly. They didn’t discuss where they were going, or talk at all, until they had driven a good ways and were close enough to the Sound that they could smell it.
Out on the water, birds went up and down with the small, soft waves, which emanated from some unseen source and were continually lapping against the pebble shore. She thought if Max looked up and saw that, something inside him might settle and perhaps he wouldn’t feel so hopeless.
“You know, I think everything is going to be all right,” she began in as sure and soothing a tone as she could muster. “It’ll blow over. Everything always does. It’ll blow over, and everything will be the same. Or maybe even better. Why, I was reading in the newspaper just the other day how they formed the first Negro Aviation Club, in Los Angeles, and—”
“I don’t live in Los Angeles. I live in New York.”
“Of course, yes, I only meant—”
“And I don’t want to be part of any club. I don’t want to be an exotic sideshow. What I do—I’m the best at it.”
“All right, but—”
“Cordelia.”
She took her eyes off the road to glance at him. They had reached an uneven patch of road and she had to hold the steering wheel firmly with both hands to keep from veering. Max was staring at his hands, as though trying to think of what to say. Then he made a fist and punched the dashboard.
“You’ll hurt yourself,” she whispered.
“What does it matter?”
“It matters to me.”
“You have no idea.” He put his hands over his face. “You have no idea how bad this is. It’s not just that I’m black. I’m a black boy with a white girl. You know what they do to boys like me? Not just in the South, either. Here in Queens County they put sheets over their heads and…”
He didn’t finish, and Cordelia winced at what he had started to say. She wanted to reply with something sweet and uplifting, but nothing came to her, and she stared out at the road in front of them, the grand houses on the bluffs, the dense clouds lurking overhead.
“Just take me home,” he told her.
“Home?”
There was an extended silence and then Max said, “Back to the Laurels’, I guess, is what I meant.”
They didn’t speak again, except Max’s mumbled directions, until they were at the hedgerow that separated his patrons’ property from the road. She recognized the stately white building, although she had only seen it from above, when they had been flying. From this perspective, down at the bottom of a hill, the house seemed more imposing, as though it were regarding her with skeptical eyes situated at the top of a long, proud nose.
“Max, I love you,” she heard herself say. Those weren’t the words she had intended, but when she heard them come out of her mouth she was almost overwhelmed by how much she meant them.
He sat there long enough that she knew he’d heard her, but he didn’t meet her eyes. “Thank you for the ride” was all he said, and then he got out of the car and started up the hill at a steady pace.
She waited to see if he would glance back or wave at her. She wondered too if he might change his mind, if the prospect of going into that house where he had once been celebrated, only to be treated cruelly when his secret was revealed, would prove too much for him. But he didn’t. He kept moving in that determined way toward the grand white house where he had once been groomed to be a hero. Her heart struggled and gasped. She wanted to call out to him and tell him she would wait, but she knew that would do no good. He was too far gone from her now.
7
DOGWOOD WAS LOUSY WITH MEN, A SPECIES IN WHICH Astrid had shown great interest before she was married. As a debutante she had been unembarrassed by her reputation as a flirt, and she had collected the affections of the old and young, the gallant and erudite and shy, like so many postage stamps. But men were abhorrent to her now. Their voices emanated from the remote corners of the house, and they crossed the lawn in pairs with rifles rested arrogantly against their shoulders. Even at a great distance she knew the way sweat clung to their skin, fouling the air around them, and the cruelty they were capable of.
In silent protest of men and all the messes they caused, Astrid had spent as much of the day as possible in a bubble bath and only emerged from the confines of the suite she shared with her husband when she ran out of reading material. She had let her hair dry naturally in the warm summer air and had used none of the usual feminine tricks to make it less fluffy afterward. She had selected a dress that Charlie had given her, a white pinafore-style thing, not because it was his gift but because she had never bothered to have it taken in—Charlie always bought dresses two sizes too big for her, and this one was so large it concealed her slender frame. Despite these efforts, her reflection, as she glimpsed it on the second-floor landing, didn’t appear undesirable, only winningly careless in a way that fit the hot season and the voluminous styles girls were wearing that year.
Oh, well—she took the latest magazines from the library and shut herself up with Good Egg in the glass-enclosed porch where nobody liked to go anymore, because it was where Darius had been shot. She put Rudy Vallée on the phonograph, which all the toughs playing pool on the second floor would surely deride as music for silly women. Then she rang for Len, the cook, and asked him for chicken salad and potato chips and lemonade, in order to ruin her appetite, just in case Charlie had any designs on dining with her. She couldn’t stand the idea of sitting across from him while he thoughtlessly digested food that he had earned by pushing around nice old men who wanted nothing more than a better life for their children. With exquisite carelessness, she lay herself down on the faded
rose velvet daybed in between the potted palms and crossed her ankles and lost herself in a Fame story about Eloise Aligash, the lady who did the voice of Cara Gatling for the radio.
These small triumphs carried her a while, until she heard the heavy footsteps sounding above her. Good Egg raised her head from the ground and yipped at the ceiling. Someone was putting their full weight onto those old floorboards, and she was sure it was Charlie. She scowled and muttered out loud and even considered going upstairs to tell him he ought to be considerate of the people below, except that would mean seeing his big face, and she didn’t want that. Instead she rang for more potato chips, and turned her attentions to Vanity Fair magazine.
The Vanity Fair was full of high-tone musings about plays she hadn’t seen and probably never would, but she was grateful to it when the hall door creaked open and Charlie’s heavy footfalls headed toward her. Her shoulders stiffened, but she issued an order to her ankles that they would remain as still and careless as before.
“Wake up, kitten, it’s time to go to work!”
Charlie’s body went down on the other end of the couch, jostling Astrid. Her ankles held firm, and she raised the magazine so that it would continue to shield her from his brutish features. The sound of his linen pants against the velvet daybed was among the most grating she had ever heard—but it was put to shame by the whisper of his fingers among the potato chips, and then again by the horror of his molars as he munched them.
“Kitten?” Charlie rested a hand on Astrid’s ankle, but she ordered it to remain frozen, impervious to his touch. “I’m going out, and I need my girl by my side.”
The Lucky Ones (Bright Young Things 3) Page 6